Contemplating compost

There are two places that get me thinking about death: funeral parlours and compost heaps.

And I know which one I’d prefer to end up in.

Into a compost heap we put everything we don’t want - an apple core, yesterday’s newspaper, grass that reached beyond the mower blades. But, out of it comes something we do want: rich, sweet-smelling compost that’s good enough to eat.

I compost consciously twice a year, during spring and autumn. My compost heaps are contained within timber pallets and galvanised mesh, drawn together with blue baling twine.

I made my first compost bin when I came back from uni and bought a house in town. Dad and I scavenged the timber off a shed on a farm that had been ripped up and turned into plantation.

At 8am on my first Sunday in suburbia I was waking up my neighbourhood nailing together my bin.

It was hard in town to find the volume of materials to get the heap really heating up. I’d mow the neighbours’ nature strips just so I could get the clippings, and for two seasons in a row I got told off for nicking the autumn leaves off a footpath that wasn’t outside my house. I was too scared to go back a third time.

I’d visit my parents’ farm and volunteer to pick up horse manure, or clean out the chook house.

The last day I spent on the farm with my dad, before he died a week later in hospital, we scraped out his duck pen. Dad held open the bags and I wobbled the shovel above - piled with straw and sloppy, stinking poo - trying not to spill it over him.

Now we’re at Mount Gnomon my compost is a rich mix of life’s waste: piglets that disappeared under 200 kilos of sow, chooks fallen from their perch, and a hairless joey found on the road.

It’s layered with pig manure, and cow, sheep, duck, guinea pig, horse, cat and rabbit poo. There are spud peelings, rhubarb leaves, mouldy loaf-ends and forgotten left-overs.

I love seeing the steam rising from it on a chilly morning. I love seeing the worms bury to safety as I fork it into the barrow.

I know where I’d like to end up.


The perfect mix
Without getting too sciency, the secret to a good compost comes down to the carbon/nitrogen balance.

You don’t want too much carbon (straw, newspapers, cardboard, dried-up weeds) or you’ll end up with a dry, mulch-like material that won’t break down.

And you don’t want too much nitrogen (grass clippings, green weeds, kitchen scraps) or you won’t be able to go near the heap for the terrible smell, and it’ll be slimy and way too wet.

So, you want a bit of this, and a bit of that. Think of pork belly and the way the meat and fat are layered. (Think of pork belly often, just for the sake of it).

When I’m putting a heap together my layers are about 10cm thick, so I’ll have a layer of straw mixed with manure, then some green weeds, some torn-up newspaper or cardboard, rhubarb leaves etc etc. I sprinkle the ashes out of the fireplace thinly, and if I’m putting dead animals in I make sure they’re near the middle so they’ve got the best chance of breaking down.

I read an anecdote in an old Tasmanian organic gardening book about a keen composter whose heap exploded when they tossed in a chicken. Unfortunately nothing as spectacular has happened in mine, yet.